Beer Forum

Hey just finished reading IPA by Mitch Steele, and in the appendix section I noticed that there was a German brewery, Bremen, that made IPAs in 1870.
I was wondering if any one had any ideas/information on what it would be like.
I was thinking it would be like a extremely hoppy Alt dry hopped with lots of noble hops.
Any information would be appreciated.
Cheers

Dunno... but with the hop varieties coming out of Hull, you could probably whip up a modern take on American-style IPA using German ingredients without needing to use a ton of 3% AA hops and adding lots of plant matter.

Sam Adams Noble Pils was a step toward this a few years ago.
It was a decent beer. Lots of late Noble hops and firm bitterness in a golden colored beer.
The IBU levels were low for an IPA, though (only 34 according to the web sites I found).

You might want to post over on Stan Hieronymous board and ask him if he has any insight, too.
He is the admin over on www.Realbeer.com. Just include "Stan" in the title. I'm sure he'll see it.

HTH-

I've done it before. A few years ago I went through my IPA phase and I also discovered that I really like German hops so I put the 2 together and I did learn a few things.

1. Noble hops and sulfate do not go together. Don't use gypsum to adjust your water.
2. Make sure you use German ale yeast (wyeast 1007 is pretty good). When I first tried this I used Nottingham because I figured it was a pretty clean ale yeast. It just didn't go well with the German grains.
3. Keep the grain bill German. All the German stuff just goes really well together.

Let us know how it turns out.

ziggy wrote: All the German stuff just goes really well together.

Yes, they prefer to exclude the impurities.

Stan's new book has a recipe for Urban Chestnut's "Hopfen", which is essentially a German IPA, if anything. 55 IBU, 14.5 Plato OG. They do it as a lager, so it's a German IPL maybe? I was never much a fan of the beer when I lived in St. Louis, but others liked it.

I gotta get Stan's book.

BDawg wrote:I gotta get Stan's book.

Yes, you do. It is fantastic.